geeking out, speaking up, having fun

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Author: rubybastille

“Try Strongbow,” they said. “It’s a cider they have over there and it’s really good.”

I was a college sophomore, spending the better part of a month in the UK learning about writing and British writers. I liked England, with its gray drizzle that reminded me of my Northwest home.

I didn’t like feeling like an outsider because my goal wasn’t to be the next Great American Novelist, unlike some others in the class.

But I liked the frigid, dark, rainy January evenings spent in the pub with two or three friends – others who were writing for fun, not academia or accolades – before we went back to the hotel to work on our stories or watch this weird show we’d discovered, “Doctor Who.”

I liked being of legal drinking age, and I really liked Strongbow. I liked the crisp dryness of cider, something more grown-up than the Mike’s Hard Lemonade and (shudder) Smirnoff Ice I was used to drinking at the time.

So when I got home, I wanted to try to find Strongbow stateside.

Shopping for Strongbow became an ongoing quest, something archived in my mental grocery lists for around six years. Strongbow wasn’t easy to find, at least not where I lived, but occasionally I would find myself in a liquor store or specialty grocery store that happened have a six-pack. Then, I would savor my purchase, only cracking open a bottle for the most anticipated of parties or the worst of bad days.

Strongbow was my drink of choice on my birthdays. My then boyfriend, now husband even bought me a six-pack for my birthday one year. It had a red bow on it. When one of my England classmates returned home from a semester abroad, we drank Strongbow. (I remember texting her on a winter break, having just tracked down another six-pack: “Captain Strongbow rides again!“) And when other friends went to England, I passed along the recommendation.

Roll the clock forward on those six years. I graduated. I got married. I had three or four jobs. We bought a house. And all that time, I kept an eye out for Strongbow.

It turned out that the nearby Fred Meyer carried Strongbow right there in the beer aisle, a phenomenon I hadn’t experienced before. Strongbow? Just sitting there, waiting for me? Mission accomplished! I can just grab more whenever I want!

I took it for granted. That doesn’t mean I went crazy with it – in fact, I still have four bottles from the last six-pack I ever purchased. I still wanted to save them for special occasions.

Those occasions are going to have to be very special, because they stopped selling original Strongbow in the US in 2014.

I should’ve been paying more attention. Hindsight being 20/20, I realized I had begun to notice some kind of change. The beer aisle seemed to only offer something called Strongbow Gold, a sweeter variety I had no interest in. I just assumed the market was changing and I would have to resume actively searching for the Strongbow I liked. After being served the Gold stuff in a British pub in Portland, though, I finally looked online and found out Strongbow as I knew it didn’t even exist in this country anymore.

Four bottles left. How long does cider keep? How much longer can I preserve my nostalgia?

Have some “West Wing” trivia! Can’t decide whether my favorite is the possibility of Sydney Poitier being the President, or Madeleine Albright shaming the producers into creating Nancy McNally.

Love those Girl Scout Samoas? Sad that the box only lasts a day or two? Solution: bake your own! The recipe make FOUR DOZEN COOKIES which should last at least three days.

I’ve been getting my nostalgia fix from these recaps of “X-Men: Evolution,” a show that eventually becomes good but starts really really terribly. Favorite quote so far: “Just in case you needed an illustration of how thoroughly spending your formative years with Charles Xavier will f*** you up, Cyclops immediately apologizes for having failed to stop Toad, having been irresponsible enough to get himself knocked out while attempting to defend a hapless peer from his insane guardian’s murder playground.”

“One day I had to sit down with myself and decide that I loved myself no matter what my body looked like and what other people thought about my body. I got tired of hating myself.”

Well hello! I’m still here. I’ve been having lots of feels over Marvel’s “Secret Wars” announcement, all those bizarre Super Bowl ads (not to mention our nation’s idols brawling in the last few seconds), “Agent Carter,” and some other stuff. None of these ever translated into blog-worthy posts, though. I think I was on Twitter more during the Super Bowl that I’d been for the past three months combined.